Benghazi Attack: Clinton Takes Heat Off Obama

Hillary Clinton has said she is "responsible" for the security of the country's diplomatic staff around the world after criticism of the handling of a deadly attack on a consulate in Libya.

The US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed along with another diplomat and two security personnel when armed men broke into the US mission compound in Benghazi.

Republicans have used the issue to criticise President Barack Obama's government - particularly after it emerged that requests for additional security at the consulate had been turned down by the State Department.

But Mrs Clinton's remarks, during a visit to Peru, could take the heat off Mr Obama as he prepares to face a grilling on the Benghazi attack during the second televised presidential debate.

"I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world," Mrs Clinton said in an interview with CNN.

"The President and the Vice President wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They're the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision."

Christopher Stevens, right, died in the attack

Vice President Joe Biden said during last week's debate with republican challenger Mitt Romney's running mate Paul Ryan that the White House had not been told about the request for more security.

Mrs Clinton has launched an internal investigation into whether there were any security failures in Benghazi, while the FBI and Libyan authorities have launched criminal investigations into the killings.

The Obama administration has also been criticised for its original assertion that the assault on the mission appeared to be linked to protests against a film mocking Islam that had been produced in the US.

But it quickly became clear that it was more likely a planned attack by Islamist militants.

Mrs Clinton said the shifting explanations for the attack were simply a consequence of "the fog of war".

"Remember, this was an attack that went on for hours," she said in another interview with Fox News. "There had to be a lot of sorting out ... Everyone said, here's what we know, subject to change."

In a joint statement, Republican senators led by John McCain said Mrs Clinton's acceptance of responsibility "is a laudable gesture especially when the White House is trying to avoid any responsibility whatsoever".

"The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the commander-in-chief. The buck stops there," it added.

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US Presidential Race: Second Debate 'Critical'

By Greg Milam, US Correspondent

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney go head-to-head in their second televised debate tonight - and the president knows it could be critical to his hopes of a second term in the White House.

Mr Obama's lacklustre performance in the first debate two weeks ago has led to him slipping in the opinion polls both nationally and in key battleground states.

Mr Romney has enjoyed a 'bounce' in his popularity from that performance and has the air of a man reinvigorated with three weeks to go until polling day.

The two will go head-to-head on stage at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island for the second of three live prime-time clashes.

This debate will take the form of a 'town hall', with the candidates facing questions from members of the audience, voters selected from the nearby Nassau County.

Experts say the format might hamper Mr Obama's attempts to go on the offensive, after admitting he was "too polite" in the first debate.

The pair shake hands during the first TV debate

Debate coach Brett O'Donnell, who worked with John McCain in 2008 and Mr Romney during this year's primaries, said: "This is the one debate that belongs to the people.

"You can't have this sort of all-out slugfest at a town hall debate."

The Obama camp hopes that addressing voters face-to-face will play on his perceived strength, according to pollsters, as a man who understands the problems of real Americans.

It is clear the debates are having a real-time impact on the election with early voting already taking place in many states.

Those who know the inner workings of the Obama White House say it has led to an increased focus on avoiding the mistakes of the first debate.

Corey Ealons, a former Obama communications official, said: "We know that's not President Barack Obama when he's at his best.

First Lady Michelle Obama has already cast her vote

"So if he's awake, aware, present and calls Governor Romney on the facts when he has the chance to, I know he'll have a really good performance."

This debate also gives Mr Romney the chance to overcome a persistent weakness in the campaign: the suspicion among some voters that he's too wealthy to relate to the middle class and the poor.

Some good news for the Obama campaign has come with the release of the latest fundraising figures for the two candidates.

Mr Romney and his allies raised $170.5m (£106m) in September, short of the record-breaking $181m (£113m) raised by the Obama camp in the same month.

It is the second successive month that Mr Obama has out-raised Mr Romney after the Republican candidate had enjoyed a financial lead for much of the year.

This election is expected to be the most expensive in history.

The president has also received some unsurprising backing: First Lady Michelle Obama cast an absentee ballot on Monday.

She tweeted: "Hey, @BarackObama, I just dropped my absentee ballot in the mail -- I couldn't wait for Election Day! Love you! --mo."

The president tweeted back: "I'm following @MichelleObama's example and voting early, on October 25. If your state has early voting, join me ... --bo."

The first couple add their initials to tweets when they, rather than campaign workers, have composed them.

:: You can watch the debate live on Sky News and the Sky News website starting at 2am BST on Wednesday, October 17

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Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro Recruited Nazis

Cuban President Fidel Castro brought in former Nazis to train his team during the height of the Cuban missile crisis 50 years ago.

Newly declassified papers released by German intelligence reveal that, at the height of the crisis in October 1962, the Cuban leader invited four Waffen-SS officers over to Havana to train his army.

He offered them four times the average salary they could have received at home if they stayed on in Cuba.

While the report says all four officers accepted the offer, only two are known to have ended up in Cuba, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) documents disclosed.

President Castro with Soviet Union President Nikita Khrushchev in 1963

The SS was a separate force from the German army and known as the armed wing of the Nazi party - it was originally set up as a bodyguard group to protect Adolf Hitler.

"Clearly, the Cuban revolutionary military had no fear of any personal contact with those associated with Nazism, as long as they served their objectives," said BND's historical investigations director Bodo Hechelhammer.

The former Cuban leader also wanted to buy weapons from Europe, dealing with an arms trafficking network run by two right-wing Germans to try to purchase 4,000 Belgian machine guns through West Germany, the documents published in Die Welt explained.

The newspaper says the "obvious and probable conclusion is that Castro wanted to free itself from total dependence on Soviet arms and trainers. But that has meaning only if he wanted to pursue their own policies".

The Cuban missile crisis began after the US discovered that nuclear missiles were being sent to Cuba.

Following a frightening 12-day standoff when the world hovered on the brink of a nuclear war, Presidents John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR came to a secret agreement.

Subsequently, US nuclear missiles were removed from bases in Italy and Turkey.

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Karadzic Denies Atrocities At War Crimes Trial

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has told a UN war crimes court he should have been rewarded for trying to stop the conflict in Yugoslavia rather than put on trial.

On the first day of his defence in The Hague, Karadzic said: "Instead of being accused for the events in our civil war I should have been rewarded for all the good things I have done.

"Namely, that I did everything in my human power to avoid the war, that I succeeded in reducing the suffering of all civilians, that the number of victims in our war was three to four times less than the numbers reported in public.

"I proclaimed numerous unilateral ceasefires and military containments and I stopped our army many times when they were close to victory."

Brought to court after his arrest on a Belgrade bus in 2008, the 67-year-old, is charged with masterminding the murder of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys by forces loyal to him in the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.

The massacre, when Bosnian Serb troops under the command of wartime general Ratko Mladic overran Dutch UN peacekeepers, was the worst atrocity committed on European soil since World War Two.

Over the space of a few days, thousands were systematically executed and dumped into mass graves in the area.

The remains of people thought to have been killed during the Bosnian war

Relatives of the Srebrenica victims watching proceedings on Bosnian TV reacted angrily to his speech,

Kada Hotic of the Mothers of Srebrenica association said: "He is trying to fool the world.

"He really reduced human suffering, he reduced the suffering of thousands of people by putting them in the ground. He ethnically cleansed many places."

Prosecutors say Karadzic, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and Mladic acted together to "cleanse" Bosnian Muslims and Croats from Bosnia's Serb-claimed territories after the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991.

Milosevic died midway through his own trial for genocide and war crimes in March 2006.

But Karadzic told the court that he never considered the possibility that there could be mass atrocities aimed at either displacing or wiping out the Bosnian Muslim and Croat populations.

"Neither I nor anyone I know could ever think there could be a genocide againt any people we consider to be the same as us - Serbs, although of a different confession," he said. 

Karadzic is also charged over his alleged role in the siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo between May 1992 and November 1995 in which 10,000 people died under terrifying sniper and artillery fire.

Karadzic was indicted in 1995 but was not arrested for 13 years

But he accused Muslims of faking the circumstances of two shellings of a marketplace in the Bosnian capital, in which more than 100 people were killed.

"Sarajevo is my city, and any story that we would shell Sarajevo without any reason is untrue," he said.

Wives and relatives of victims were looking on from the public gallery as he addressed the court.

Like Mladic, Karadzic has also been charged for his alleged role in taking hostage UN observers and peacekeepers to use them as human shields during a Nato bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb targets in May and June 1995.

Karadzic, who represented the Bosnian Serbs at talks aimed at ending the civil war, told the court "many incidents happened while I was abroad attending negotiations or meetings".

After being indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1995, he spent 13 years on the run before being arrested in 2008 in Belgrade where he practised as a doctor of alternative medicine.

In his opening statement, he described himself as a "physician, a psychiatrist, a psychotherapist, group analyst and a literary man" as he began to read his statement to the court.

His trial began in October 2009 and prosecutors put their case against him between April 2010 and May this year.

Judges dropped one genocide count in June, saying there was not enough evidence to substantiate the charge for killings by Bosnian Serb forces in Bosnian towns from March to December 1992.

Genocide, the gravest crime in international humanitarian law, is the hardest to prove.

Karadzic, who has been allocated 300 hours for his defence, has said he will call 300 witnesses to testify on his behalf.

The names include Greek President Carolos Papoulias, who was Athens' foreign minister during the Bosnian war.

Karadzic has said Mr Papoulias' testimony could prove his innocence for the infamous shelling of Sarajevo's Markale market on February 5, 1994, in which 67 people died.

Meanwhile, the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal began the trial of its last suspect in a separate courtroom.

Goran Hadzic, president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina, is accused of the murder, torture and forcible deportation of ethnic Croats from 1992 to 1994.

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Client List In Sex Trial Gets US Town Talking

Police have released the first batch of more than 100 names of men who were issued summons in the case of Zumba dance teacher Alexis Wright.

The 29-year-old is charged with turning her Kennebunk dance studio into a brothel and secretly filming her encounters.

Residents watched the news flash on their local evening TV news, and people could be heard discussing who they might know on the first list of 21 names as they walked through the picturesque Maine town, which is home to around 11,000 people.

More intrigue will follow in the coming weeks as police release the names of other alleged clients in their regular local newspaper beat reports.

Kim Ackley, a local real estate agent, agreed the men should be named and shamed.

"What's fair for one has to be fair for the other," said Ackley, who believes she knows several people on the list. "The door can't swing just one way."

The judge ordered the release of the identities without ages or addresses, so it was not immediately clear their occupations and roles in the community, if any.

But rumours abound that the full list contains the names of law enforcement officials and local celebrities.

Alexis Wright has pleaded not guilty to 106 counts of prostitution, invasion of privacy and other charges.

Her business partner, Mark Strong, 57, has pleaded not guilty to 59 misdemeanor charges.

Police said the Zumba instructor kept meticulous records suggesting the sex acts generated $150,000 (£93,000) over 18 months.

They believe many of the suspected 150 clients were filmed without their knowledge.

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Stolen Paintings Include Picasso And Freud

Several paintings including works by Picasso, Matisse and Monet have been stolen from a Dutch museum in one of the largest heists in years.

Police said a total of seven paintings were taken from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam including Pablo Picasso's Tete d'Arlequin (1971) and Henri Matisse's La Liseuse and Blanc Et Jaune (1919).

Two pieces by Claude Monet - Waterloo Bridge, London (1901) and Charing Cross Bridge, London (1901) - were also stolen.

The thieves also made off with Paul Gauguin's Femme Devant Une Fenetre Ouverte, Dite La Fiancee (1888), Meyer de Haan's Autoportrait (circa 1889 - 91) and Woman With Eyes Closed (2002) by Lucian Freud.

The heist occurred during Monday night or Tuesday morning in Rotterdam.

The total value of the seven pieces has not been revealed but is said to be "considerable", according to Mariette Maaskant from the museum.

"There was a break-in during the night and a few paintings were taken that represent a considerable sum," Rotterdam police spokeswoman Patricia Wessels confirmed.

"A major investigation is under way and forensics are at the scene."

The museum, which opened a new exhibition a few days ago to celebrate its 20th anniversary, will be shut for the rest of the day.

Investigators are now reviewing CCTV footage and appealing for witnesses who might have seen the crime, which is believed to have taken place in the early hours of the morning.

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Indian Minister: £83K Is Not Enough For Scam

An Indian politician has insisted the £83,400 his colleague allegedly embezzled was too small an amount to be taken seriously.

Steel minister Beni Prasad Verma was speaking in defence of Salman Khurshid, a law minister accused of taking government money set aside for a trust which helps disabled people.

Mr Verma told The Times of India newspaper: "I believe he could not have embezzled 71 lakh (7.1m rupees; £83,400). It is a very small amount for a central minister.

"I would have taken it seriously if the amount was 71 crore (710m rupees; £8.3m)."

The allegations have led to protests on the streets of New Delhi

In an editorial, the newspaper said Mr Verma's comments were "grossly ill-timed and ill-phrased".

"The comments reflect the rather blase attitude that the political class has developed towards corruption," it added.

Mr Verma later tried to withdraw his remarks, saying that corruption on any scale was wrong.

Mr Khurshid, 59, denies all the allegations against him.

Corruption has been one of the biggest political issues in India over the past two years.

A string of scandals have hit the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, sparking protests.

Activist Anna Hazare, who models himself on independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, last year led hundreds of thousands in street demonstrations against endemic bribe-taking and corruption.

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MiniFlame Spyware Targets Middle East

A security company has unearthed some spying software dubbed miniFlame - which analysts believe may have been created by the US government.

The virus, which was discovered by Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, has been carrying out precise attacks on targets in the Middle East.

Kaspersky said miniFlame had struck only 50 or so "high-value" machines, while Flame, a related programme it unearthed earlier, had struck 5,000 computers.

Iran had previously blamed Flame for causing data loss on computers in the country's main oil export terminal and oil ministry.

"Flame acts as a long sword for broad swipes, while miniFlame acts as a scalpel for a focused surgical dissection," said Kaspersky researcher Roel Schouwenberg.

Not much is known about miniFlame's victims, with infections being found mainly in Lebanon and Iran, but also in the West Bank, Gaza, Kuwait and Qatar.

Kaspersky and US security software company Symantec said Flame's control software remotely directed a number of smaller programmes - with miniFlame now identified as being among them.

Symantec said at the time the overall project "fits the profile of military and intelligence operations".

According to Kaspersky, miniFlame includes a "back door" allowing for remote control, data theft and the ability to take screenshots as the user engages with Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, web browsers and other applications.

"MiniFlame is installed in order to conduct more in-depth surveillance and cyber-espionage," said Kaspersky chief security expert Alexander Gostev.

Leon Panetta warned of a pre-emptive strike - was miniFlame it?

Kaspersky said it had found six versions of miniFlame, the most recent created in September 2011, but some of the protocols it used dated back to 2007, making it a long-running effort.

MiniFlame responds to a series of commands which were given the first-name codewords Fiona, Sonia, Eve, Elvis, Drake, Charles, Sam, Alex, Barbara and Tiffany.

The Elvis command, for example, creates a process on an infected machine, Barbara takes a screenshot and Tiffany directs the computer to a new command server.

US defence secretary Leon Panetta recently warned Washington could launch a pre-emptive strike against foreign cyber attacks that could cause "significant physical damage" or kill US citizens.

He said Washington was rewriting its rules for engagement in cyberspace, although the Pentagon has said little in public about what it can do.

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Cuba Scraps Exit Permits For Travel Overseas

Cubans wanting to travel abroad will no longer be required to secure an exit visa, the government has announced.

From January 13 next year, there will also be no requirement to present a letter of invitation.

Cubans with a valid passport and visa from the country they are visiting will also be able to spend as many as 24 months overseas, and then request an extension when that period runs out.

Currently, islanders lose residency and other rights including social security, free health care and education after 11 months.

But some restrictions are likely to remain.

Doctors, scientists, members of the military and others considered valuable parts of society currently face restrictions on travel to combat brain drain.

"The update to the migratory policy takes into account the right of the revolutionary State to defend itself from the interventionist and subversive plans of the US government and its allies," the official notice in Communist Party newspaper Granma said.

"Therefore, measures will remain to preserve the human capital created by the Revolution in the face of the theft of talent applied by the powerful."

Fidel Castro stepped down after almost half a century in power

The general travel restrictions over the last half a century have not stopped as many as 30,000 Cubans leaving the island illegally each year.

Many have ended up in the US, which is home to more than one million people of Cuban origin.

Under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, since 1966 the US has allowed nearly all those who reach its territory to remain.  

Cuban President Raul Castro announced last year that the government was planning immigration reforms that would be introduced gradually.

The president has pressed for economic reforms over the past two years aimed at modernising Cuba's state-dominated economy while maintaining one-party rule.

Raul Castro assumed power in 2006 when his ageing brother Fidel stepped aside after ruling the island nation for nearly five decades.

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Gold Fields Mine Threatens To Sack Strikers

One of the mining companies suffering amid the spread of industrial unrest in South Africa has issued an ultimatum to 23,500 staff to return to work or face the sack.

South African bullion producer Gold Fields, the world's fourth largest gold miner, has been among the companies facing union demands for better wages.

Disruption to output at its mines in the country has so far cost it 65,000 ounces of lost gold production worth almost £85m.

Its chief executive Nick Holland said: "The company has issued an ultimatum to all striking workers ... to present to work by no later than 1400 hours Thursday 18 October 2012 or face immediate dismissal."

The warning affects two thirds of the company's workforce.

It comes as scuffles continue throughout the country - with dozens of arrests made at Samancor's chrome mine amid reports of rubber bullets being fired by police.

Around 3,000 people were thought to be involved in the protest, which saw demonstrators clash with authorities.

The site is not far from Lonmin's Marikana platinum facility, where 44 people died in August.

Protests have also spread beyond the mining industry, with some 200,000 council workers due to stop working later this week over issues with pay.

The unrest has damaged confidence among investors and forced Standard & Poor's and Moody's to downgrade South Africa's credit rating.

About 80,000 mineworkers, representing 16% of the mining workforce, are currently striking across South Africa.

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